The Center for Design Engagement

a community proposal for SHOCKOE BOTTOM MEMORIAL PARK

AUGUST 2017

The Center for Design Engagement

a community proposal for SHOCKOE BOTTOM MEMORIAL PARK

AUGUST 2017 AUGUST 2017

A REPORT AND DESIGN PROPOSAL Prepared by the Center for Design Engagement

Joseph Krupczynski Max Page

Randy Crandon Nick Jeffway Camesha Scruggs

The Center for Design Engagement www.designengagement.org

The Department of Architecture University of Massachusetts Amherst CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 01 page 1 why shockoe bottom matters the design charrette

DESIGN PROPOSAL 02 page 7 shockoe square interpretation memorialization economic development

CONCLUSION 03 page 23 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 04 page 25 APPENDIX 05 page 27 context historic maps “It is holy ground, not only to the descendants of those who are buried there, but to every American everywhere. Black, white, Latino or otherwise, we all stand on those shallow and unmarked graves. The people laid to rest there laid the cornerstones of this country with their bare hands. We prosper on the foundations they laid. Our freedom wrests, in no small part, on the freedom they were denied.

We owe them a debt we can never repay. We can, though, remember. We must choose to do so.

If we can’t tell that story in Richmond, the seat of so much of the history we share, we betray the debt we owe to our forebears and devalue the inheritance we leave to our children. This is an essential part of our national journey, our struggle to be free.” Bob Deans Author of The River Where America Began A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 1

01 INTRODUCTION The Center for Design Engagement (designengagement.org), a non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Massachusetts Amherst and dedicated to involving the full range of the public in design decisions, was invited by the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project to spend a week in Richmond, May 29 to June 4, 2016 conducting community meetings, meeting with local advocates, making presentations at area high schools and building on the ongoing community work, produce a design proposal for a Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park. The designs in this report are the product of that week and ongoing design development based on advice of community leaders in a series of meetings in 2017.

We are pleased to present this proposal for the community’s consideration. Our goal is to spur further discussion and, we hope, a consensus that a more expansive Shockoe Bottom landscape is necessary for securing this place as a site of conscience, a sacred site, and a place for building a more equitable Richmond. Our highest hope is that we can advance the conversation that will eventually lead to a Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park, a place where Richmonders and all affected people can make fully visible what has for too long been made invisible. 2

CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: CEREMONIAL OFFERINGS AT THE EDGE OF THE AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND SITE; SHOCKOE BOTTOM IN THE 19TH CENTURY; GABRIEL, WHO LED A REBELLION AGAINST SLAVERY IN 1800, WAS HUNG IN SHOCKOE BOTTOM; THE TUNNEL UNDER BROAD STREET LEADING TO THE AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND; A SLAVE AUCTION HOUSE IN SHOCKOE BOTTOM BEFORE ITS DEMOLITION AFTER THE CIVIL WAR. Introduction A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 3

Shockoe Bottom matters because the exchange in human beings that took place there, the exploitation of those bodies, their torture and murder, their treatment as WHY commodities like cotton and tobacco, was unprecedented in its scale in the United States. Only had SHOCKOE a larger slave-trading district. Richmond, however, was the epicenter of the trade. Richmond’s unique role was BOTTOM as the wholesale center, the supplier of enslaved human MATTERS beings to the rest of the labor-hungry South. Shockoe Bottom matters because the work and wealth produced by the enslaved people who were forced to pass through Shockoe Bottom built Richmond, Virginia, and the United States.

It matters because nowhere else is the contradiction between the American ideal of personal freedom and the reality of American slavery seen as powerfully as in the one square mile of downtown Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom. Here, ideals of freedom were proclaimed by Patrick Henry in St. John’s Church and built in stone at Thomas Jefferson’s . Both Henry and Jefferson, of course, were slave owners. And here a Confederacy would house its leaders and marshal its forces in defense of that profitable system of human exploitation. And here as well a young man named Gabriel, a man with ideas, skill, and eloquence, would give his life in an attempt to lead a rebellion to overturn the system of slavery.

Shockoe Bottom matters because honoring enslaved people’s graves is a basic duty that we have failed to carry out.

It matters because the landscape of slavery in Shockoe Bottom was literally buried and to a degree - although not entirely - forgotten. And it was buried and forgotten in a city that invented and demanded veneration for a rewriting of the history of the Civil War - the painstakingly constructed mythology of the “Lost Cause.” 4

THE DESIGN CHARRETTE

OVER A HUNDRED PEOPLE GATHERED FOR TWO COMMUNITY MEETINGS ON MAY 30 AND JUNE 1 TO DISCUSS IDEAS FOR THE MEMORIAL PARK. Introduction A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 5

The Center for Design Engagement (CD*E) team Over the course of the week we held two began its work with a statement made by Ana Edwards, community meetings attended by more than 100 people. Chair of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation We also spoke with a dozen key individuals, and made Project, in the now-open field of the African Burial presentations at two Richmond high schools (Richmond Ground: “We have a right to know. And now that we Community High, and Huguenot High School, where know, what do we do, and how do we do it?” We also students shared their creative ideas for remembering take as a baseline assumption – one that some might Shockoe Bottom. We asked each group to consider three question – that Richmond has been changing rapidly, questions: with a population increasingly ready to confront and wrestle with Richmond’s history, not piecemeal, but wholeheartedly, and, indeed, with an open heart. How should we remember what CD*E, composed of architecture and happened in Shockoe Bottom? history faculty and students from the University of 01 Massachusetts Amherst, was asked to envision what a Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park could look like and do What other activities beyond for the city of Richmond. We did not land in Richmond marking and memorializing should take place in this with preconceived ideas, nor a sense that we were 02 memorial park? here to reinvent the wheel. Indeed, we came with great humility, recognizing the enormity of the task as well as the voluminous efforts made by Richmonders over the How might we encourage past decades to bring to light the history of Shockoe economic development that brings true and long-lasting Bottom. We read, we visited, and we learned – from benefits to Richmonders, 03 previous reports, from conversations, and from past especially its African-American community engagement efforts. community? We developed our proposal from a foundation of community ideas developed over the past year and captured in a community report of August 2015 in a CDE faculty and students returned to Richmond regularly process led by the Sacred Ground Project. Richmonders in the year following the release of the first report, overwhelmingly believe that Shockoe Bottom must taking in further advice from community leaders. This be remembered with a much larger landscape than updated report includes designs that synthesize dozens simply the Lumpkin’s Jail. This was the overwhelming of specific suggestions from conversations with many sentiment expressed in the Sacred Ground process, a stakeholders. later community engagement process led by the city administration and in our own week-long process in June 2016. That said, our design charrette proceeded on the assumption that the Lumpkin’s Jail project was moving forward but could easily be incorporated into a larger Memorial Park. There was also a consistent belief that the area of the African Burial Ground is sacred space and should be treated differently than other parts of the site, as a place of reverence and respect. Finally, we were urged to embrace economic development in Shockoe Bottom and to suggest ways to make it more equitable and sustainable. VIEW AT MEMORIAL PARK A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 7

DESIGN 02 PROPOSAL The elements of our design proposal emerged out of the many insights provided by the community meetings. Those insights, which we captured in dozens of pages of notes, were wide ranging, and included both specific recommendations as well as ideas about the emotional and symbolic meanings the group hoped the site would convey. This updated report attempts to capture the requests and insights of community members we have met with over the past year

The discussion was passionate and productively heated, as interracial groups debated how best to honor the enslaved peoples, tell their history, and also make Shockoe Bottom a vibrant economic resource for the city. Remarkably, we found a broad agreement on the core elements for the memorial park: a strong design feature to grab the attention of the public; a new gathering place—a public square—for the community; a symbolic recovering of the Shockoe Creek; a clearly demarcated place for reverence and reflection; lasting investments in the education and advancement of Richmond’s African-American residents. Every element of our design proposal derives from the ideas presented in these and past community conversations. 8

MEMORIAL PARK

CENTER FOR THE BUILDING ARTS SHOCKOE SQUARE

AREAS OF FOCUS Design Proposal A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 9

7

6

3 9

5 10 11 2 8 4 12

1

AERIAL VIEW

Reconciliation Triangle 01 Winfree Cottage 05 Interactive Interpretive Wall 09 Center for Building Arts & Sustainable Development 02 African Burial Ground Site 06 Shockoe Square 10 Lumpkin’s Jail Site / Devil’s Half Acre 03 Gabriel’s Way 07 Grove of Light 11 Urban Gardens 04 Richmond Main Street Station 08 Footprints of Slave Trade Buildings 12 10

EXISTING VIEW FROM E. BROAD STREET

PROPOSED VIEW FROM E. BROAD STREET Design Proposal A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 11

A new gathering place, Shockoe Square, is where Richmonders and people from far and wide can gather together to consider the legacy of slavery and its long SHOCKOE shadow. SQUARE Shockoe Square would be the new gateway into the Shockoe Bottom memorial sites - Lumpkin’s Jail (referred to by the era’s Black residents as “Devil’s Half Acre,” for the brutality of the place) and the African Burial Ground - and would be the place where visitors and Richmonders can gather to start their explorations of the history of Shockoe Bottom, to begin walking tours, to hear music and drama performances, view outdoor films, and to learn of public art projects and other historic landmarking efforts around the city. As important as Shockoe Bottom is, the trade in human beings shaped virtually every area of the city; we hope the Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park will be seen and experienced as the center of a citywide effort to re-present Richmond’s past. 12 Design Proposal A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 13

RE-ENVISIONING THE MODERN MONUMENT

We have marked this square with a Grove of Light, designed to make Shockoe Bottom visible up and down Broad Street, from the Amtrak trains, and from I-95, over which some 100,00 vehicles pass every day. We hope that in the future when people speak of Richmond they will speak of the Grove of Light at Shockoe Bottom before they speak of Monument Avenue, where the valorization of the Confederacy has long dominated the image of the city. Part of the response to the divisive history and present of Monument Avenue would be to draw the focus away from the Confederate and Lost Cause revisionism, toward a new landmark at the site of Richmond’s most important untold story.

The Grove of Light consists of a series of columns. Each column has a lower level consisting of curved glazed rings making up the “bark” of the “trees.” These rings would be produced through a community process that would encourage the city’s key organizations and institutions to help create the foundation for these columns.

The rest of each column would be a tower of light, encircled by a metal screen. Each screen would be perforated in a way to create a pixelated image of an important fi gure in Richmond’s history, the fi gures who have long been left out of the main narratives of the city’s past. From close up it would be an abstract canvas of cut openings of different sizes. But from a distance – say, from the train, or from the top of Church Hill, or from City Hall – the images of key fi gures in Richmond’s history who have too often been ignored would come into focus.

We imagine a community engagement process to determine which fi gures would be portrayed. The screens would be designed to be removed and replaced, so that there could be a rotation of signifi cant fi gures on display, and new ones added over time. This is intended as a living landmark, precisely in contrast to the fi xed marble monuments that dot the city. 14

1 2 3

1 ANTHONY BURNS / 2 ELIZABETH VAN LEW / 3 VIRGINIA CIVIL RIGHTS COALITION (1981) / 4 GABRIEL / 5 UNITED STATES COLORED TROOPS

IMAGERY OF INDIVIDUALS WHO HOLD PARTICULAR SIGNIFICANCE TO THE HISTORY AND STORY OF SLAVERY IN RICHMOND WOULD BE USED AS INSPIRATION FOR THE PERFORATED SCREENING ON EACH COLUMN

4 5 Design Proposal A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 15

IMAGERY OF GABRIEL HALFTONE ABSTRACTION OF IMAGERY 16

EXISTING VIEW BETWEEN RAIL LINES

PROPOSED VIEW BETWEEN RAIL LINES Design Proposal A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 17

A digital interpretive wall, that will offer a compelling, flexible platform for honoring and reflecting on the memory of enslaved people, their pain, their INTERPRETATION resistance, and their resilience will connect Shockoe Square to the African Burial Ground and the area of Lumpkins Jail.

The interactive wall would offer a history of the site, images of the development of Shockoe Bottom, and would be a vehicle by which we can display the list of names of enslaved people captured in the remarkable Unknown No Longer project of the Virginia Historical Society. The wall would also be able to be transformed – perhaps nightly or for anniversary events – into a screen for artists to present their work. 18

EXISTING VIEW FROM E. BROAD STREET

PROPOSED VIEW FROM E. BROAD STREET Design Proposal A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 19

We propose a memorial landscape centered around the African Burial Ground. For many people who come to know Shockoe Bottom, walking on the fields MEMORIALIZATION that once served as the African Burial Ground and which, still, somewhere beneath the ground, hold the remains of free as well as enslaved men and women, is the emotional culmination of a visit to the site. We aim to create a landscape that offers respect to the dead and an opportunity for the living to reflect on and honor their lives.

Many people over the years have expressed their desire to make, at least symbolically, the Shockoe Creek visible. It is around this creek that the first Indian settlements were established millennia ago, and around which the modern city was begun. We have designed a waterway that would lead from the community farm we are proposing (see below) into the African Burial Ground. Small bridges over the waterway would mark a transition into the most sacred precinct, adjacent to the area on which scholars believe the burial ground stood. We have named the pathway alongside the waterway in the African Burial Ground area Gabriel’s Way. It leads to a place reserved for a changing work of public art in honor of Gabriel, who was publically executed on this site for his efforts to overthrow slavery in Virginia.

In response to the passionate call we heard repeatedly for capturing the vast scale of enslaved people who passed through Shockoe Bottom – to be sold, to be hired out to work, some to achieve freedom – we will place a hundred thousand small rocks along the waterway. We expect there to be interpretive elements added throughout this memorial landscape, so that in small encounters, we might bring to life the history of slavery, resistance, and resilience in Shockoe Bottom. 20

EXISTING VIEW AT SIDE OF SEABAORD BUILDING

PROPOSED VIEW AT SIDE OF SEABOARD BUILDING Design Proposal A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 21

historic preservation, archaeology, public history, and sustainable agriculture so that they can continue the work of preserving, interpreting, and adaptively reusing ECONOMIC Richmond’s rich history, and building a sustainable city. A long triangle of land leading from the train station DEVELOPMENT across the site would be home to a learning and research farm, where sustainable agricultural techniques, derived from past and current practices, would generate new knowledge, not to mention produce that could be shared and sold at the nearby 17th Street Farmers Market.

We also urge that revenues garnered from the development of parcels around the Memorial Park be placed in a community benefit fund, dedicated in part to supporting this educational investment in the future of Richmond, and to continuing the research into the historic resources of the district. For this reason, we also support the proposal by Slave Trail Commission member David Herring for the establishment in the Bottom of a An economic development model that is firmly Historic Overlay District. focused on helping African-American Richmonders today, given that this is a place where the labor and lives While we believe that tax-paying and for-profit of Africans and people of African descent were stolen, business should be built on some of the empty lots is an important goal of our proposal. in Shockoe Bottom, there should also be a land trust established, which would remove a portion of the land While Shockoe Bottom is ripe for dramatic from speculation and support the creation of long- reinvestment, we believe there are ways to do this term affordable housing. Shockoe Bottom must be development in a new way, one that is built from the start economically vibrant, but it cannot become one more to provide good jobs, and business opportunities not gentrified, economically segregated neighborhood. That simply for the so-called “creative class” but for regular would dishonor the history of the place. Richmonders. We suggest the following components for economic advancement in Shockoe Bottom.

We propose making investment in education a central component of what happens next in Shockoe Bottom. Virginia Union University (VUU) can draw a direct line to Shockoe Bottom, indeed, to Lumpkin’s Jail. It was on the site of Lumpkin’s after the Civil War that an educational institution was founded that eventually became VUU. In honor of that legacy, and with a focus on the needs of young people today, we propose that the major institutions – VUU, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Richmond -- collaborate to create a Center for Building Arts and Sustainable Development in the Seaboard Building, a place where young people, and recently incarcerated individuals, can learn the varied vocations of architecture, We need “the courage to confront and confess the history that has made us.”

Leonard Pitts Columnist VIEW TOWARD PROPOSED GROVE OF LIGHTS AT SHOCKOE SQUARE FROM DOWNTOWN RICHMOND AT BROAD STREET A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 23

03 CONCLUSION These plans are bold, but they emerge from humility. We have been sobered by the enormity of the history of violence and resilience of this raw place, and deeply moved by the commitments made by so many activists and regular Richmonders. We hope our ideas and designs can advance the movement to finally bring Shockoe Bottom to its rightful place at the center of the American story.

“Our country should explore ways to preserve the public memory of enslaved Americans. Their overlooked lives are an inextricable part of the historical narrative of our country….We should remember enslaved Americans for the same reason we remember anyone; because they were fathers, mothers, siblings and grandparents who made great contributions to our nation. Regardless of our country’s history or our ambivalence about the memory of slavery, we can choose to remember the enslaved — the forgotten. They offer our contemporary society examples of resilience and humanity. Preserving their memory contributes to our own humanity.” Sandra Arnold Founder, National Burial Database of Enslaved Americans

A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 25

04 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We feel enormous gratitude to a number of Untold RVA (www.facebook.com/UntoldRVA) organizations that made this charrette and these design provided clear insights for the ethical presentation of the proposals possible. missing pieces within Richmond’s historical narrative.

The Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation We also want to acknowledge the Project (sacredgroundproject.net) has led the campaign professionalism and care with which our University of to broaden and deepen the way Shockoe Bottom and the Massachusetts students – Randy Crandon, Nicholas enslaved people of Richmond are remembered. Jeffway, and Camesha Scruggs – undertook this important assignment. The National Trust (savingplaces.org) has worked tirelessly to support Richmond-based institutions Perhaps most importantly we want to thank and individuals working on Shockoe Bottom. We thank the residents of Richmond, the thousands who have the Trust for providing funds to allow our team to spend participated in community meetings, in protests, in a week in Richmond. We were pleased to have worked government meetings, all to demand a simple goal, and held our community meetings at a unique local which is the mantra of our work: make that which was institution, the Storefront of Community Design. rendered invisible, visible again.

Preservation Virginia (preservaitonvirginia.org) was instrumental in all aspects of this charrette. The support of one of the oldest preservation organizations in the country has been enormously important for the effort.

The Black History Museum and Cultural Center (http://blackhistorymuseum.org/), an important new institution in Richmond, generously served as host for the public presentation of the ideas in this report.

A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 27

05 APPENDIX The drawings and maps collected in this appendix were produced as supporting material for the design charette and proposal. 28

CONTEXT

RICHMOND MAIN STREET STATION RENOVATION

LUMPKIN’S JAIL MUSEUM

17TH STREET MARKET

IT IS THE INTENT OF OUR DESIGN PROPOSAL TO RESPOND TO AND CONNECT ADJACENT DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES IN THE AREA. Appendix A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 29

reflect

learnremember gather

economic development

PARTICIPANTS OF THE COMMUNITY MEETINGS IDENTIFIED CONCEPTS AND QUALITIES FOR EACH AREA OF THE PROJECT SITE 30

HISTORIC MAPPING

KEY

existing conditions

project site

lumpkin’s jail lots 62, 63, 64

shockoe creek

1800

1810 Appendix A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park 31

1835

1859

1877 AUGUST 2017

A REPORT AND DESIGN PROPOSAL Prepared by The Center for Design Engagement

Joseph Krupczynski Max Page

Randy Crandon Nicholas Jeffway Camesha Scruggs

The Center for Design Engagement www.designengagement.org

The Department of Architecture University of Massachusetts Amherst A Community Proposal for Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park A Community Proposal for a Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park The Center for Design Engagement / www.designengagement.org